Tweetheart

My colleague in the US, Heather Hopkins recently covered the blaze of publicity around Oprah Winfrey starting to tweet and its immediate impact on Twitter’s US share of visits. In Australia the influences seem to be broader than America’s new 'tweetheart’.

When Vanity Fair published a story earlier this year on a group of all-American, all-white "tweethearts," the real Twitterati took the magazine to task for ignoring a growing force on Twitter: African-Americans.

Thursday night's "Daily Show" began with another thorough take-down of John McCain's stance on Don't Ask Don't Tell, but afterward Jon Stewart moved on to McCain's 2008 Presidential running mate Sarah Palin, who he dubbed "America's Tweetheart." Palin has taken to Twitter to vent her frustrations with Obama's handling of the latest WikiLeaks document drop, but Stewart believes her outrage is primarily unfounded.

One of the latest twilebrities is Simmons alumna Julia Roy, '05. She was named "America's Tweetheart" by Vanity Fair, which called her a "26-year-old New York social strategist turned twilebrity."

"I liked the idea of people who don't really know each other except through short messages getting together and meeting for the first time, putting a face to a name, and also telling people how much I enjoy reading their updates," said Tim Lara, Twitter user @timothydanger. "Meeting new tweeps was nice too. I gained a couple of tweethearts since then and enjoy the banter. (My twitter is never serious)."

"Just got the imaging for my new fragrance Radiance and thought I'd share it with all my tweethearts," she wrote.

Kim, 29, treated herself to the frozen snack following a photo shoot earlier that morning, which she wrote about on her Twitter account: 'Morning tweet hearts! Heading to a fab photo shoot for ShoeDazzle.com!'

There is the local angle - if you are one of the desperate spruikers who interpreted Kim Clijsters' twittering "Happy Australia Day to all my Aussie tweethearts" as an indication her heart beats green and gold, even if her dress was only a half-hearted green.